All Your Ads Are Belong to Us

He finally said the quiet thing out loud: Zuckerberg wants to remove almost all ad campaign control from your meddling little hands.

Quarterlies: Ad Spend Slows on Major Platforms

This week, most of the major platforms released their Q2 reports. We analyzed them to look at whether ad spend was growing or slowing. And in almost all cases, Q2 was slower in terms of growth.

Meta

Investment in Meta properties rose by 10% year-over-year in Q2, down from 16% in Q1.

Facebook still dominates Meta's ad spend at 68%, while Instagram's share increased to 32%. Facebook CPMs decreased by just 1% year-over-year, partly due to the increasing share of cheaper Reels and overlay ads.

Instagram's ad spend growth rate cooled to 24% year-over-year in Q2.

Google Search

Google search advertisers increased their budgets by 14% year-over-year in Q2, down from 17% in the previous quarter. Shopping ads rose by 16%, while text ads saw a drop in click-through rates.

Amazon

Amazon Sponsored Products spending growth decelerated to 8% year-over-year in Q2. However, sales generated through Sponsored Product ads increased by 11%, resulting in improved ROI for advertisers.

YouTube

YouTube was the only major platform that saw an increase in ad spend growth last quarter, with a 28% year-over-year growth. This was driven by a 74% increase in impression volume, despite a 26% decline in average CPM.

Emerging platforms

Walmart Sponsored Products, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest all experienced significant growth last quarter, with Walmart leading at 45% year-over-year growth.

Zuckerberg Wants to Control Your Brand’s Ads

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the quarterly report to chat about his vision for advertising on the platform in the years ahead — and it’s exactly what you think it is: AI is coming for your control.

Has the backlash begun?

A very big deal indeed, since most attempts at this level of AI control, by definition, remove human oversight from the process. You only need to look at how Google’s Performance Max started to see this model in action. Limited creative control and certainly no level of reporting that advertisers had been used to.

It’s possible the industry did quietly clap back at the trend, since we’ve watched several of these AI products trickle some of that control — or at least some reporting — back.

But Zuckerberg is clear: He sees a future where:

Creative generation is already here, of course, in the form of image enhancements, text options, and so on. But clearly Zuckerberg sees a much deeper “Daddy knows best” approach — an approach not everyone thinks is realistic.

TikTok Launches New App Marketplace for SMBs

TikTok launched a new App marketplace for small business users this week. It features a collection of TikTok tools, built by third-party developers, that can help small brands maximize their performance in the app.

Meant for SMBs

The App Center includes listings of apps in different functional categories; these offer “lightweight solutions,” as opposed to more comprehensive tools that are better suited to bigger brands.

Free trials available

Most of the apps listed offer free trials, so you can try them out before signing up for their service.

X’s App is Suspending User Accounts (lol)

X has removed its Mac app from the App Store.

The app hadn’t really been updated since the rebranding from Twitter last year. But one big benefit to it is that it didn’t display any ads. So, of course, it had to die.

Instead, the company suggested users just use its iPad app instead. If you’re not familiar, newer Macs with Apple’s silicon can use iPad apps on their Macs, though they tend to be less functional than Mac-specific apps.

Houston, we have a problem

And, oh yeah, one other small note — if you do decide to use the iPad app on your Mac, your X account might be suspended.

Some people on Reddit are reporting that as soon as they logged in using the iOS version, their account was shut down.

It’s probably a bug. We don’t know for sure because X doesn’t respond to media inquiries any more.

The workaround

If you still have the old school Twitter for Mac app on your computer, it does appear that you can still use it.

Just don’t delete it, because apparently you’ll never be able to get it back again.

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